There are quite a few issues in Pennsylvania that need to be resolved (see the LPLC Platform). However, they are all minor compared to two huge issues: fixing Pennsylvania’s dismally failing education system is number one and fixing our elections is number two. Second only to avoiding our country’s bankruptcy, the same two issues also are top issues nationally. However, at least seventeen states have recognized the education problem and are making fundamental changes to improve their schools.

Fix Our Schools

Article III, Section 14, of the Pennsylvania Constitution mandates that, “The General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education to serve the needs of the Commonwealth.” There is no way that requirement is being met by the current system – not even close! Costs and the heavy burden on taxpayers continue to spiral ever upward out of control while students’ reading and math abilities actually decline year after year. It should be obvious by now that more money, more fiddling with the “funding formula,” and more nibbling around the edges is not going to fix this colossal mess. Major change is required.

Poor Education — There is no greater threat to our future than poorly educated and even mis-educated citizens. Reading and math scores are dropping. Those are indeed important measures, but what about history, science, understanding the free market economic system, understanding of our representative republic, the US Constitution and other important dimensions of a good basic education? You can be sure that schools are even less competent at teaching those subjects than they are with reading and math for which they know students are tested!
High Cost — For public schools, the average cost per pupil per year was $23,000 in 2024, while the average for private schools was $13,000.
Lack of School Choice — Parents and their children are locked-in to one specific school based on their address unless they are able and willing to pay school taxes plus the additional cost to educate their children elsewhere.
Unresponsive to Parents — Parents complain that one-size-fits-all schools are not responsive to their concerns and worry that their children are being indoctrinated with “woke ideologies.”

Such awful performance is exactly what you should expect from a monopoly (and a government-run monopoly is the worst kind of monopoly). The free market economic system can provide the best quality education at the lowest price, just as it does for so many other goods and services. Many people fail to understand these things because they are economically illiterate. Why? Because the schools never taught them about the free market economic system and how it works!

It should nevertheless at least be obvious that step one certainly must be to stop doing what doesn’t work. Then put parents in the drivers’ seat; give them full school choice. All schools will be fairly funded because they will earn the tuition parents pay them when they decide to send their children there. Schools will be responsive to parents. This is the direction in which a number of other states are moving. How do we transform the current mess into good schools? Click here for Fulfilling Pennsylvania’s Education Mandate

Fix Our Elections

Elections are crucially important. Ultimately, they are the only way citizens have to hang onto control of their government. It is a less recognized fact that our public elections are not working well, but they are not. Elections have never worked as well as we all thought they did and, over the years, politicians have found ways (like gerrymandering) to insulate themselves from voters. Election integrity has been eroded too. Here are the most important six things necessary to fix elections.

Needed to make elections function correctly:

Replace the plurality voting method with AADV (Approve/Approve/Disapprove Voting). It has been known for 250 years that plurality (sometimes called first past the post) is a horrible voting method. AADV was proposed in 2020 and does a radically better job of enabling voters to choose the candidate with which they will be most satisfied. This article published by Reason magazine explains: The End of the Voting Methods Debate
Use the PPS (Precinct-Preserving Splitline) impartial geometric procedure to draw all electoral districts. This will banish gerrymandering and make redistricting an understandable, transparent, and fast process with no acrimony. Click here for complete information about PPS: Drawing Electoral Districts
Eliminate barriers to ballot access. There should be very few races with 0 or 1 candidate on the ballot and some with as many as 5 or 6 choices. Boil the complex and contrived political party classifications down to just one: Qualified Political party. Any political party having at least 0.05% of statewide voter registration and having their rules on file with the state’s Secretary of State is a Qualified Political Party. Qualified Political Parties are entitled to nominate candidates in accordance with their own procedures and entirely at their own expense. Currently, there would be four Qualified Parties: Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, and Green. Independents would need to collect a reasonable number of nominating signatures. The number should relate to the size of the district, but should never be less than 10 or more than 3,000 for a statewide race. The time window for collecting those signatures should be ample. All signatures would be validated by the county or state agency that receives them, not by private organizations or individuals.

Needed to Guarantee Airtight Election Integrity

All voters must vote in-person at their friendly neighborhood polling places (except up to 1% absentee ballots for good reason). There is no other way that a secret ballot can be guaranteed! Voters must not be able to prove to someone else how they voted since that enables vote buying and opens the door to other forms of fraud. When political parties are willing to dump more than $100 million into trying to influence a single senate race, vote buying is going to happen if it is at all possible no matter how illegal it is.
Implement positive (photo) voter ID. Signature validation cannot be relied upon.
Automate elections securely with modern computer technology. Elections should happen entirely on election day. Full, complete, and final results should be available a half hour after the polls close, including tallies of all write-in votes. Such a system called Election Manager that utilizes voter-verifiable paper ballots is already available. Results would be independently verifiable. Click here for information about Election Manager: The Election Manager System